New Haven bike gangs robbing pedestrians, police cracking down

NEW HAVEN -- Roving gangs of kids on bikes are again robbing and intimidating people, and police vowed to saturate neighborhoods to send a strong message.

Assistant Police Chief Luiz Casanova, who heads the patrol division, said the groups again are roaming around and looking for trouble -- and victims.

A troubling trend was detected in Fair Haven with youths on bikes surrounding pedestrians, setting upon them and making off with their valuables. It's not a straight up street robbery. The groups attack before they even demand anything.

"They're beating them up (first) and then they're taking their stuff," said Sgt. Tony Zona.

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In the cases where police have been able to grab one of the cyclists, many times they haven't even been from the neighborhood.

"I'm not going to have them come create chaos in Fair Haven," Zona said.

The problem isn't exclusive to Fair Haven but the robbery concerns are more acute in the densely populated neighborhood with a large undocumented immigrant population. The concern is that undocumented workers, lacking the paperwork to secure bank accounts, often carry significant amounts of cash and are viewed as potentially lucrative prey.

The Rev. James Manship, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Church in New Haven, attended the police Compstat meeting Tuesday. Chief Dean Esserman asked if his parishioners, many of whom are not legal citizens, had increased concerns.

He said he and his parish has concerns.

"We know where that leads to," he said of street robberies. "I don't want to bury anyone else."

The reemergence of gangs of bike riders conjures images of 2005 during the so-called summer of "kids on bikes."

In that case, large groups of youths, sometimes 60 or more, rode around in the Dwight neighborhood, clogged streets, causing chaos and, more than once, attacking passersby. In that neighborhood, the city cracked down on bike violations and handed out scores of tickets for violations.

The department now is formulating a plan to tackle the new problem. It is labor intensive.

According to Zona, the idea is to saturate neighborhoods and stop large groups and not the slowest in the group, take pictures and video and share them with cops stationed at schools and school security guards so conversations can happen there.

When they can, they will seize bike and call parents.

"When you ride in packs, you can expect to be engaged" by police, Casanova said.

Other neighborhoods have seen similar trends.

Downtown, kids on bikes have been blamed for a series of street robberies.

According to Yale Police Chief Ronnell Higgins, Yale cops have made four or five stops of groups on bikes and seized four or five pellet guns.